The
quest for alternative fuel sources that are cleaner, cheaper, and
more abundant than traditional fossil fuels is underway around the
world. Researchers are studying everything from battery
power to solar energy and fuel cells.

Fuel cells hold
great promise and have long been studied as alternatives to fossil
fuels. Traditionally, the problems plaguing fuel cell-powered
vehicles that run from hydrogen include how to produce the hydrogen
cheaply and how to store it safely. Despite issues that still
surround fuel cell-powered vehicles, a study
conducted in June by Pike Research found that within the
next decade 670,000 fuel cell powered vehicles would be sold each
year.

Researchers at the Cornell University Energy Materials
Center have made a breakthrough discovery that will make hydrogen
fuel cell power much more economical. The breakthrough comes in the
form of a new
catalyst that uses platinum nanoparticles. Platinum is
traditionally used in fuel cells as the catalyst, but platinum is
expensive and can be easily deactivated in the presence of even low
levels of carbon monoxide rendering the fuel cell inoperable.

The
Cornell researchers have discovered a method of making the platinum
catalyst able to withstand thousands of times more carbon monoxide.
The process also makes the platinum catalyst material much cheaper to
produce. The team created the catalyst using platinum nano particles
that are deposited on a support material of titanium oxide. The team
then added tungsten to increase the electrical conductivity of the
catalyst. The resulting platinum catalyst is 2,000 times more
resistant to carbon monoxide than a catalyst using pure
platinum.

That higher resistance to carbon monoxide
means that the fuel cell can burn hydrogen with as much as 2% carbon
monoxide in it. The researchers say this is very important because
hydrogen derived from petroleum has a high concentration of carbon
monoxide in it. The ability for the catalyst to withstand more carbon
monoxide eliminates the need to clean the hydrogen as much, thereby
reducing the cost of making hydrogen.

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One reason to use petroleum for the hydrogen source is that instead of the 30-35% efficiency you get from burning it in a normal combustion engine, I believe using it for a source of hydrogen for a fuel cell you jump up to over 60% efficiency, though I may be totally wrong. But if that is correct then it would make a lot of sense to use the petroleum in a fuel cell as you would need less of it to do the same amount of work.

This is correct. Burning petroleum in a combustion engine, you're limited by the Carnot efficiency. The maximum energy you can extract is 1 - Tc/Th where Tc is the cold temperature of your heat sink (usually the air for cars), and Th is the high temperature of your engine. For most automobile applications, this puts you around 30% engine efficiency. That is, 30% of the energy in the fuel goes into doing work, the other 70% just creates waste heat.

Fuel cells bypass this by converting the energy directly to electricity instead. They can frequently achieve 60% efficiency, with some fuel cells in the lab hitting over 80% efficiency.

There are some caveats to that as well... That formula assumes that the cooling system itself does not produce energy. Which is true in the vast majority of cases. However, there are means to derive electrical or kinetic energy that also act to cool the engine.

Two examples would be water injection, and peltier plates. Granted, these two methods aren't used much at all, but that doesn't mean there aren't ways to improve the efficiency of an ICE beyond that temperature difference barrier. It would require innovation on the cooling systems, but it's very possible. As far as how practical this is... well, at least it's more practical than some ideas being subsidized.